Sunday Best: College football is fixable -- here's how

CA's beat reporters offer their suggestions

What would you do if you were the king of college football, for just five minutes?

In today's column, we put the question to three of our reporters:

Ron Higgins, SEC reporter: I've got five minutes and no timeouts to change the face of college football. Don't worry. I've worked on this drill many times over the years.

On the field, tweak the scoring system. In basketball, you get three points for long-distance shots. Football should have the same, with four-pointers for field goals 55 yards or longer.

Also, a team that scores a touchdown should have the option to try a three-point conversion play with the ball being placed at the 20-yard line to start the play.

I would also require the referee of a crew be available to a pool reporter after a game in which there is a game-changing officiating decision. While it's true officiating crews sprint off the field at the end of the game, are placed in a van and rushed by police escort to their hotel, the ref should be able to be contacted by phone to explain such a ruling.

Off the field, it's time to pay players in some form or fashion. College football is just about an everyday proposition now, with daily weight workouts and running year round, as well as 7-on-7 drills in the summer. NCAA rules state athletes can't hold jobs, not a good thing for the athletes from poor socioeconomic backgrounds.

For the fans, I'd turn down the Star Wars sound systems in the stadium that are raised to NASA rocket liftoff levels during pregames and timeouts.

Note to schools: This is why you have a marching band and a School of Music. I don't want to drive up to a game and hear The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" screeching on a stadium P.A. system from a mile away. I don't want to be screaming to the person next to me to carry on a conversation in a stadium.

Eardrum-bleeding music doesn't necessarily mean electric atmosphere. It means I have a pounding headache even before the singing of the national anthem.

Kyle Veazey, enterprise reporter and veteran SEC scribe: I only get five minutes? C'mon! That's like giving me a shiny quarter and telling me to solve the national debt. So many targets, so few resources.

My five minutes would be spent on one of the things that came out of Indianapolis last week: I'd institute a baseline Academic Progress Rate for postseason play. I love this. After all the dithering of trying to tie academic performance to real, meaningful effects like scholarship or practice time loss, the presidents came up with an idea that will finally slap coaches and administrators in the face. If you're not doing a good enough job of moving your players on in the progress toward their degree, then you don't get the privilege of playing for the things you desire the most. If your APR is under a certain threshold, no week in Miami to play in the Orange Bowl. No week in Pasadena to play for the national title.

To which folks will certainly respond: But wait! That means some name-brand programs will have to stay at home from bowls! Some bowls might have to fold! The horror! To which I say: Tough. Take care of your business in the classroom. (Or successfully place non-graduating players in the professional ranks, where they theoretically have a chance to make money and better their lives, which is the same goal as a college degree. The APR adjusts for those cases, too.)

In order for this to work, there would be another step that I, admittedly, would have a hard time dictating without also having power over the NFL: Eliminate any sort of rule prohibiting early entry into professional sports. If a kid thinks he can play professionally at age 18, let him try. Very few could, of course. This is probably more of a basketball thing. But you catch my drift -- if you don't want to be in college, don't come. Nothing wrong with that. Go make money, if you think you can.

But if you choose to go to college, your energies should be in the same direction of the overall energies of the college as a whole: Get an education first, play football second. In my five minutes in charge, we'd work on that.

Phil Stukenborg, University of Memphis football reporter: Geographical sensibility.

Have those two words ever stood beside each other? Is geographical a word?

In this era of ongoing conference realignment -- Texas A&M to the Southeastern Conference? TCU set to join the Big East -- geographical sensibility is becoming, well, an oxymoron.

And, with it, some college football fans are being summarily dismissed, much like the longtime season-ticket holders at major universities who, without significant cash donations, are relegated to the upper reaches of the upper deck.

Rivalries intensify, in part, because of proximity. Fans schedule their weekends in the fall to follow their favorite teams. Do Arkansas fans in the northwest corner of the state consider planning a trip to Columbia, S.C.? Would Texas A&M fans stomach a 1,000-mile trip to Kentucky?

And nothing is more illogical than Conference USA foes UTEP and East Carolina meeting. The schools are separated by 1,902 miles, or a 29-hour road trip providing you limit those stops at Cracker Barrel.

Certainly, and perhaps with the major networks' help, some sensibility can return. If Texas A&M bolts for the SEC, there is speculation that the Big 12 might look to Houston and SMU. And if that were to transpire, why wouldn't TCU reconsider, rescinding its Big East invitation to make a sensible jump to a better fit?

To borrow loosely from the Geico gecko, five minutes could save a school at least $5 million in travel expenses and do wonders restoring the true intent of college sports and natural rivalries.